Escaping Terra, Exposure (Part One)

In the mid-24th century, humanity took to the stars. Over time, the colonies grew restless. One year, at an armistice meeting, a man's faulty translator accidentally broadcasted an insult that ignited humanity's first interstellar war. Earth lost. By the year 2806, the last Terran humans are huddling in bunkers just waiting to die. Somehow, somewhere, a deadly global epidemic has re-animated the dead, driving Earth's humans to extinction. Except for two young brothers...

Submitted:Nov 6, 2011
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Escaping Terra (Part One)

*ESCAPE

It was once foretold that of the twenty-one billion human beings
on Planet Earth, only two lowly brothers survived the ongoing Sol
System War. While these two young boys weren't alive at the start
of the war-which started nearly 300 years earlier, they knew of
their situation. Earth was dying, but leaving was almost
impossible! But somehow, the Hayes brothers abandoned Earth and
all her mysteries…

During the regular mid-morning announcements, Hunter Hayes and
his little brother Walker learned of a virus that had broken out
in the upper levels, apparently caused by radiation-mutated
bio-warfare bomb leavings. Somehow, the disease penetrated the
facility's air filters, and of the 1200 people initially infected
on the four upper levels of the underground city, few survived.
Ever paranoid about pandemics, Hunter prepares to leave.

"But you can't leave the upper levels without a suit!" Walker
shrilly yelps,

"I know," Hunter says, "But I don't like the idea of this. Such a
deadly disease, those bombs carried, and if you take radiation
into account, there'd be no survivors! Prep the portables,
just in case."

As Walker went off to do his brother's bidding, a young woman is
seen limping oddly far down the next hall, with a strange moan
and mottled flesh…

*REBIRTH

Oddly enough, this strange contagion didn't actually remain
isolated at the Anchorage bunker, or even originate there! It was
a desperate attempt by Lunar forces to eliminate the last of
Earth's life for good. It did its job, and everyone died. Trouble
is, most of them didn't stay dead…

-Alec Johnston ("Pinnacle Beings of Sol's
War")

II

Anchorage, Alaska

Bunker Apartment N-66

October 12, 2806, 7:33 A.M.

"Come on, Hunter!" Walker shouted as he picked up his rucksack,
"We're going to be late for-What the?!"

Frozen in both awe and fear, Walker stands mouth agape glaring at
an oncoming horde of limping, moaning beings slowly
advancing for him.

"I'm coming, I'm-(pauses) Walker!" Hunter yells as he sees his
little brother being lowered into one of the creatures' mouths,
"Walker! Kick his chest!!"

After doing so, this (zombie? Let's go with that,) creature
released its grip in pain, but also alerted the other things,
causing them to start suddenly sprinting ungracefully at Walker
and Hunter.

Almost by instinct, the two brothers fell back into their
apartment.

"What the hell are those things?!!" Walker screamed after a long
struggle to close the heavy steel door,

"I have no idea," Hunter said, "But I think it's time to go. Grab
the first aid kit, two camping packs, and dad's old peacekeeper
weapons. And you watch your language!"

After a frantic ten minutes' scavenging, the Hayes brothers
located two weeks of canned and freeze-dried food, a Swiss Army
knife, an automatic .44 magnum, a twenty-gauge shotgun, and two
swords (similar to Japanese katanas, but shorter). As they packed
the last of their supplies into their packs, they failed to
notice that their front window was breaking…

* * *

Port Aldrin, Luna

October 12, 2806, 7:45 A.M.

A small shuttle is seen returning to a Lunar port, but not
docking. Two dozen men in white suits march out a starboard
hatch, walking through the vacuum, entering a special room
attached to an airlock, where their suits are cleaned and
polished to an even shinier white than before. The last person,
before entering the facility, stops, points a strange beam at the
floating shuttle, twists a few knobs on his suit, and sprints
into the facility as the shuttle flies off and implodes.

After disinfection, and removal of their suits, the last person,
revealed to be a woman, orders her troops to their bunks, while
she sets off for the general's office.

"That is the last little pocket of resistance fighting
your virus, Grace," the man says as he points to a monitor,
"Seems like your weapon of mass destruction has some unwanted
effects!"

The general points to an image of two boys in what appears to be
their final stand. Backed in a corner, the older one is fighting
with a pistol and some odd kind of sword, while the younger one
is only using a sword. When the boy breaks his blade and pulls
out a shotgun, the general cuts off the feed.

"I don't think they'll last long…" the general says,

III

Anchorage, Alaska

Bunker Apartment N-66

October 12, 2806, 7:46 A.M.

"SHOOT!" Hunter shouted, "PUMP THE EFFING GUN AND SHOOT!"

Walker followed these instructions quickly, and forced at least a
dozen creatures from the room. Hunter and Walker foresaw this
opportunity to sling on their packs, reload their guns, and bolt
out the door, with a few berserk zombies chasing after them.

Once they thought it was safe to look, the boys broke into the
city's library and hit the computers for schematics- of the
bunker. The Anchorage bunker, like others before it, is a "hub"
bunker, meaning it has connections to the sea, allowing safe
travel or trade outside the facility without contacting the
radiation and diseases of the surface. Hunter and Walker are
using these schematics to find their way to a submarine or other
transport to abandon their bunker.

"A-ha!" Hunter said, "Hey, Walker! You got that route yet?"

"Yeah! What did you find?" Walker asked,

"I just discovered that there's about four submarines at the next
dock!"

"Alright, let's go!"

"Sure, let's-Wait, let me see that route?" Hunter said, "Not so
fast, dude. The dock is about 20 miles away; it'll take us about
a week to-Hey! My corn!"

While the two boys were squabbling over the can, a message from
somewhere in Eastern Europe began playing on a monitor…

"Attention all surviving humans" the man said, "This is senator
Daniel Tennant of the Royal Intergalactic Naval Government, or
R.I.N.G. for short. Anyways, as you are probably aware, a massive
and highly lethal virus has overcome what's left of humanity, but
let me assure you, there are survivors.

"We are using the last of our space-worthy ships to evacuate our
surviving population from Earth to the moon, or Mars, or whoever
will let us down to their surface. Any surviving humans will be
given ten weeks, about until Christmastime, to report to the hub
bunkers at the Western UK, and Africa's New Mombassa andBrisbane,
Australiafacilities, the locations of our ships. If you don't
report in 10 weeks, you will be left behind. Tennant out."

The message played three more times, and the brothers were still
arguing about whose corn was whose. But, as they came to an
agreement, Walker heard the last of the message, giving the
Brother's Hayes the one thing they still needed; a place to go…

* * *

Anchorage, Alaska

Bunker Apartment Block V

October 19, 2806, 9:30 P.M.

The further down the bunker the boys went, the more glamorous,
clean, and glitzy-looking the apartments were appearing…

"Why?" Walker repeatedly asked,

"I'm not sure," Hunter explained, "But I think it's because the
richer people got to live further away from the poisons and
radiations of above, so the government made those rooms more
expensive to live in. That or, if anything were to go wrong,
they'd have easy access to the sea."

Actually, Hunter was exactly right. Back at the start of the war,
locations all around the world started building large nuclear
bunkers about as big as the 21st century cities they were named
after, but it initially came at a price. The farther down your
apartment was, save the levels Z and AA (which had the cheapest
costs, due to them being maintenance crew levels), the fatter
your wallet had to be to own it. It should also be noted that any
levels between CC and ZXX (the lowest level of the bunker) were
not living quarters, but were actually for things like power
grids and farms. The Hayes brothers are heading to DE, or the
airlocks for submarines to escape Alaska in.

"Peacekeeper HQ?" Hunter wondered as he opened the door, "I think
I, -- AH!" Hunter just located the main meeting area for the
bunker's police force, known as Peacekeepers. When he opened the
door, the remaining beings in the facility had been reanimated,
giving a nasty surprise to Hunter and Walker…

*THINK FAST

From what has been told, this second major encounter was much
more difficult than the others previously mentioned, because
these were undead and armored cops! Before they got infected, a
group of twelve to twenty officers (Sadly, the exact number has
been lost to time) armored up and readied for battle, reanimating
minutes later. Hunter and Walker entered this room with low
ammunition and a nearly broken short sword, having to fight
creatures with Kevlar vests and steel helmets…

-Alec Johnston ("Pinnacle Beings of Sol's
War")

IV

Anchorage, Alaska

Bunker Apartment Block V- Peacekeeper Headquarters

October 19, 2806, 9:30 P.M.

"Peacekeeper HQ?" Hunter wondered as he opened the door, "I think
I,-- AH!" As hunter was about to let out a shriek high-pitched
for a seventeen-year-old boy, Walker quickly slaps a hand over
his older brother's mouth.

"Shush! I don't think they notice us; the helmets are covering
their ears, and look at those pitch-black faceplates! Their HUD
batteries must be dead, so they probably can't see…" Walker
whispers, still hand-gagging Hunter,

After a few pondering seconds, Hunter finally stammers "Okay,
s-so how are we on ammo?"

"Well, your pistol's out, and my shotgun has a dozen shells left,
counting the seven in the gun."

"Good to know. But just to be safe…"

Down the hall, two loud bangs are heard, setting klaxons off all
across the level. The creatures dart out of the room as fast as
they can, toward the source.

Huddled in a dark corner, Walker angrily whispers "Was it REALLY
necessary to shoot those chickens?!"

"Well, it was either the two shells to break the glass and
attract those zombies away, or the whole twelve shells and my
broken sword to try to kill them! What would you do?"

Without a response, the two brothers waited…

When they thought it was safe, they scouted out the room. Bite
marks, dry pools of congealed blood, and deep scratches on the
walls had strewn the facility. After some quick searching, the
boys have to give up their father's weapons for compatible
ammunition. Abandoning the shotgun, empty pistol, and broken
sword, Walker and Hunter leave with a semiautomatic rifle, two
revolver pistols, and a twelve-gauge shotgun of semiautomatic
capabilities, a major upgrade over their dad's.

"Hey, look! A turbo-lift!" Walker says as he loads his rifle,

"A what? If this old thing works, then we can get down to
the docks in half an hour! Let's see how this goes…"

After a few random button presses, and an anger infused
pistol-whip, the air pressure-driven capsule slowly started to
drop, then shot like a bullet, as far down as it could.

* * *

Port Aldrin, Luna

A-Dock Security Center

October 20, 2806, 4:02 A.M.

"CRUZ! WAKE UP!" the corporal bellowed from the intercom, "You
are NEEDED in the SECURITY OFFICES!"

With a yawn and a grunt, young Grace shuffled out of her sleep
shift, into her fatigues, and sleepily walked down to the office.

"What do you want, general?" she said as she rubbed her eyes,

"Well," the man said with an annoyed grimace, "It seems that
there's more survivors to Cruz's Plague than we thought! The
British folk are rounding up about 20,000 survivors, and are
prepping ships for takeoff!"

Snapping awake, Grace said, "What the hell do you want ME to do
about it?"

Back on Earth, a door creaks open to the sound of the under-used
lift door opening…

Trying to adjust to the darkness from the almost pure-white light
of the elevator took awhile, so Hunter marched forth, shotgun in
hand.

"Son…" a familiar voice moans, "Hunter! Walker! Is that you?"
Next, some growls, an eerie gurgling, and a deep moan are heard.

Keeping themselves quiet, the boys close the turbo-lift doors and
cut off their flashlights, using the ambience from various
indicators and computers to dimly light their way.

"Here we be," Walker whispered, "Pick a sub. Got the maps?"

Hunter responded with "Right here. Let's… Take… This one. Fill
the bags with plenty of fresh water. There's enough food on there
for months, and we can get oxygen from the surrounding waters.
But I wouldn't trust the desalination filters… Go!"

*CLOSE CALLS

"…Though ever-confident, my boys had almost no sea-faring
experience, save for basic courses on how to surface the craft in
a pinch. What I would like to know, is how did they ever manage
to even fight their way into the craft, what with all those-those
things around!"

Many accounts on how the brothers escaped were fictional,
half-truths, or exaggerations. Much like the "interview" of their
dead father (shown above), which was recorded in 2552, nearly 300
years before he was born! Though there was indeed the
odd zombie, who was quickly dispatched with a bullet through the
skull, it wasn't like the theatrical undead "shooting galleries"
of 21st century post-apocalyptic fiction. But alas, there
were challenges, such as getting to Madagascar, the
closest British launch pad to the brothers by Christmas…

-Alec Johnston ("Pinnacle Beings of Sol's
War")

V

Houston Center, Luna

Eastern Comms Office

October 20, 2806, 7:30 A.M.

"Send out a message to the Martian factories. Patch me through
for radio chat, we need to save money." Grace says to a worker,

"Okay, I'll do it. It'll take a bit though" the boy responds,
"This isn't really a good time, the Earth is between us and them,
but I-"

"Then patch us through via the recon fleet!"

"Yessir!"

After some fiddling around with buttons and the passing of a
microphone, Lieutenant Cruz finally gets to put in her request:

"Hey, Ensign Apolo? It's Grace. I need to requisition for a
biological warfare missile. Large classes, XPS-130 type cluster
shots, 20 warheads, deliver to Sinos Roris. God, I wish it didn't
take 45 minutes to contact you… Oh, and use the high-G fourteen
day route, no six-month hibernation."

Later that day, Grace receives a text message, saying "Sure
thing, hon, on the way as we 'speak'. What do you need them for?"

She started to pick up her tablet to respond about spreading her
virus without wasting a shuttle, but she deletes it, simply types
"general's orders", and hops off for breakfast.

* * *

"Hunter! Shut the hatch!" Walker shouts as Hunter gathers the
last of the supplies, At one point a trio of berserk zombies
found their way to the brother's Hayes' newfound submarine. They
tried their best to avoid them, until now, with Hunter sprinting
back to the hatch, two of the zombies in hot pursuit. After
running a lap around the dock to get a lead, Hunter throws the
supplies in the door, and is starting to close it, when the
zombies started forcing the lead-lined door back open! Hunter
releases a hand off the hatch handle, draws his pistol, and as
one of the creatures was about to make a meal out of Hunter's
arm, he pulls back the hammer, presses the barrel against the
zombie's forehead, and pulls the trigger.

After kicking the corpse out the hatch and killing the other
zombie, Hunter catches a glimpse of an I.D. badge on the first
creature's chest: A man named Robin Hayes-better known as Walker
and Hunter's father! With an "oh shoot" feeling on his mind,
Hunter closed and sealed the heavy, lead-lined hatch, joined
Walker on the bridge, and set off.

" Where are we going again?" Walker asks, "Was it Mombassa, or
London?"

"Neither. Mombassa's too far to make it in time, and London's
landlocked. Set a course for Brisbane, we've only got two months
until Christmas!"

All across the sub, the two young brothers piloted and maintained
the craft to the very best of their limited abilities. However,
there was going to be problems sooner or later…

"And just what would that be?" Walker asked,
"Your birthday is in a few days, and I don't know what to cook
you!"

As Hunter trotted off to see what food there was to use, a small
warning light chimed over in the ship's bridge, repeatedly
flashing "MISSILE ALERT"…

*COSMOCIDE

Though that missile would eventually affect the brothers more
than they could ever believe, they were safe for the moment. That
was the last missile to strike Earth for good. The one to deliver
the diabolical brainchild of Lieutenant Grace Augustine Cruz…

Coming back from his deep slumber, Hunter responds with "Really?
Did you release the probe?" Realizing Walker didn't, Hunter slips
up to the bridge, pulls a pin, and watches a monitor. These
probes are what replaced periscopes back in the 22nd century,
just small cameras on a 250-foot cable, allowing for the
submarine to stay deep and still observe. That's how the Terran
navy took back the aquatic world 276 Exrun in 2430, because when
a probe was discovered, the cable would be cut to drift away,
putting surface ships on a wild goose chase!

"Walker. I couldn't get anything on the camera. Just heavily
polluted water, and an orange-gray cloudy sky. Now where is this
'land'?" Hunter said as he reeled in the cable,

"Take a look!" Walker said, "On the long range radar! When I
scale it out like so…"

Walker turns a dial at a console, and with every "ping" of the
radar, a huge blot of land would grow agonizingly closer…

"Oh!" Hunter realized, "Wait, you see that button, the one that
says 'filters'? Push that, and select 'metal'!"

In doing so, a large cluster of geometric shapes started showing
up in the corner of the screen. As the ship's main computer
started thinking about what the shapes might be, they started
getting smaller and more detailed, eventually morphing into a
large cluster of British spacecraft launch platforms, vehicles
still waiting to take off.

"Turn the sub towards that dock about a mile off the pads. Pull
that lever back to full speed. We should be there by Christmas
Eve!" Hunter brightly announces…

* * *

Houston Center, Luna

Terran Monitoring Center

December 10, 2806, 7:30 A.M.

"Grace, come here!" a tech at the monitor said, "You might want
to come see this! Did you adapt that virus like you were told, or
did you just simply concentrate the original one?"

"I adapted my virus, why'd you ask?" Grace asks,

"Take a look!"

The tech fiddles around with her keyboard, repositioning a
near-dead satellite over the African (now-derelict) mega-city New
Mombassa, specifically a British launch pad cluster. Zooming the
camera in as far as possible, one could see a young woman running
desperately from a large group of berserk zombies, possibly
family members, judging the close resemblance. The woman is
brandishing a strange blue-silver pistol (greatly resembling 20th
century hairdryers), wildly shooting at the horde. With the
glowing projectiles randomly spraying about, one strikes a zombie
in the chest. With the zombie passing out on the ground and
swelling up, the girl starts desperately clawing at New
Mombassa's city seawall. Oddly enough, not much happened before
the camera went out, except some sort of orange-red gas bubbling
from the zombie's orifices, some of the living zombie's bodies
disintegrating on contact with the gas, and the woman raising the
pistol to her temple…

"I think," Grace says after the shock of the gun discharging,
"That that's a new development…"

VII

Nigerian-Annexed Territory, Madagascar

(Abandoned) Submarine Dock J-64B

December 23, 2806, 11:32 P.M.

On a chilly, humid, quiet December night, a low deep hum is heard
from the shallow polluted water. Somewhere back in the facility,
a display lights up, as that hum grows louder. In red capital
letters, the display reads "+20hZ, +40hZ, +60hZ," gradually
counting up until the display turns green at +100hZ, causing the
dock chamber to come to life in a bustle of fluorescent lamps,
robot arms, hydraulic whines, and oversize hatches opening. Five
minutes later, the main bulkhead of the dock opens, revealing the
upper hatch of an old military submarine gliding almost
effortlessly through the inky black ocean…

"Walker, we're here," Hunter quietly says, "Wake up. The ships
are-by what the message said, leaving in a matter of hours. We
still have those two miles to traverse. We have to go now
if we want to make it."

When little Walker wouldn't wake up, Hunter got on the sub's
intercom and shouted "A-WOOGA! A-WOOGA! Walker, we're taking on
water! AAAH!" Walker quickly snapped awake, snatched his revolver
from the hanging holster, and got a dry click when he pointed it
at Hunter--, he forgot to pull the hammer back.

Surprised he was still alive, but hiding it really well, Hunter
simply picks up the rifle, and passes the shotgun to Walker, and
says, "Put your suit on, we're leaving."

Little did the brothers Hayes know, that those weapons would get
their work cut out for them over the next few hours…

*ISOLATION

It is at this point where the legends start coming into play.
Mostly consisting of two lowly people grabbing the biggest
weapons possible, and "kicking arse", or simply fighting off the
huge horde with nothing more than a rock and/or an assassin's
pistol. Only one thing throughout these stories is true-there was
a large twenty thousand-strong horde of heavily mutated humanoid
creatures, and two teenage brothers to escape their attacks.

-Alec Johnston ("Pinnacle Beings of Sol's
War")

VIII

Emergency Survival Shelter (Port Aldrin), Luna

Oxygen Pod 227-AA

December 24, 2806, 12:01 A.M.

Grace wakes up dazed, confused, and in an unfamiliar environment.
In the tight confines of this precious pocket of air, she can see
the absolute basics for any deep-space survival system: A
bare-bones spacesuit (no armor plates or enhanced movement
servos), three days' worth of freeze-dried food, an oxygen flood
system for the pod, a 15-yard roll of duct tape, and a water
filter.

Grace tries wriggling into the heavy suit-not an easy task in the
low gravity, but she slips in, unwittingly putting a hairline
crack in her visor. Thinking she's ready, she slowly opens the
door on the tiny pod, pulling the surrounding air into the icy
vacuum outside.

My ears are popping, she thinks,
it's all normal. Probably just the
situation I'm in, but it hurts more than
usual…

Suddenly, she realizes it's not the situation; her suit has a
leak! Scrambling around trying to find where the air is seeping
out, young Grace falls out of her pod.

Good, she thinks, more room to look.

Finally, with her suit nearing lethal pressure, Grace sees the
source: that crack in the visor. Ears about to burst, and her
nose dripping blood, Grace stumbles over to an unoccupied pod to
grab the duct tape, and quickly seals up the leak.

She turns around and notices the large hole in wall, taking note
of the suited bodies lying just outside, and takes a laser pistol
from a dead security guard.

Loading the weapon with a power cell, Grace begins searching for
answers as to why the facility was popped open, why everyone was
killed except her, and how the hell did she get into that pod!

* * *

Brisbane, Australia

Superhighway 21, 1.1 Miles from Launch Pads

December 24, 2806, 3:00 A.M.

It has taken nearly four hours for Hunter and Walker Hayes to get
to the halfway point of their final run for the ships that the
British government-in-exile had promised. So far, it has been a
rough trip. While yes, it was only a two mile trip to the launch
pads, try moving as quickly as possible in a four-hundred pound
suit, plus the weight of the firearms and ammunition you're
carrying, all the while keeping quiet that an undead army doesn't
swarm you, and doing your best not to trip on a packed and
abandoned freeway, knowing the slightest bump or crack could
puncture that thin shield protecting you from the poisonous
atmosphere around you?

Anyways, it's a cold, clear, full-mooned night. The boys are
quietly slinking along this massive forty-lane highway, guns at
the ready.

"Walker, stop!" Hunter whispers over the radio, "I can see the
launch pads, right over there!"

Walker responds with "Okay, but why did we have to stop?"

"Just look at the freeway ahead…"

Walker looks, and he sees why they've stopped. A large plane, a
Boeing 949 to be precise, had slammed into the freeway perhaps
hundreds of years ago, leaving a large hole in the road, just
slightly larger than the craft's 250-foot wingspan, the last
standing twenty of the highway being an unstable, crumbling strip
of concrete, electrical wiring, and rebar.

Choosing between potentially dying trying to cross a bridge, and
certainly reanimating if they stay, the Hayes brothers push
forward.

After a good fifteen minutes' arguing, a lone zombie notices
their presence…

"But it's crumbling-Walker! Shut off your suit lights!"

Fumbling around with the switches on their helmets, the boys cut
off their lights, almost blending perfectly with the night if
their suits were black.

Hunter pulls a camera off the side of his helmet, attaching it to
his rifle (just behind the foresight), and scans around. On a
special display inside his helmet, Hunter searches the freeway
around them, the camera on a night-vision setting. He spots that
lone zombie about to moan.

Screwing a suppressor improperly on the end of his rifle, Hunter
lines up the sights of his rifle on the zombie's head, and pulls
the trigger. After shattering the misaligned suppressor on the
gun, Hunter takes another shot, killing the zombie and alerting
all the others in the area with the thunderous crack. Taking
another quick scan of the freeway, the brothers spot a large pack
of creatures coming their way!

Hunter tosses his rifle to Walker, who tosses a shotgun back.
Walker slaps a button on his chest, activating the
movement-enhancing motors in his suit, allowing him to dart
across the bridge faster, despite the extra weight. Hunter, who
began hurling buckshot at the zombies, followed suit, and
continued backing along the bridge, holding back the horde pretty
well, until about halfway along, the shotgun let off a dry click.
Hunter tried pumping the gun, then switching the semiautomatic
setting off and pumping the gun again, until he realized, he was
out of ammo!

Not thinking about what to do next, Hunter hurls the heavy gun at
the oncoming creatures, and bolts across the remainder of the
bridge in a few graceful strides.

Walker, watching all this, began pushing a fuel truck towards the
bridge. Hunter takes back his rifle, and begins holding off the
group with carefully aligned headshots, for the rifle is almost
empty too!

When he caught on to what Walker was doing, Hunter slung the
rifle, and began assisting his little brother, drawing his
revolver to defend them as they pushed the truck.

Flipping the vehicle on its side to block the bridge that much
more, Walker draws his pistol while Hunter reloads and holsters
his.

"So what were you planning on doing?" Hunter says, gasping for
air,

"When you threw my shotgun away, I knew I wouldn't need the last
four shells in my pack, so I started thinking about how to
destroy the bridge." Walker says, as he kills two zombies in one
shot,

Hunter tosses the shells on the ground near the tank of the
truck, and then carefully places the (NUCLEAR) power core of a
nearby sedan into the mix. That AAA-battery sized core would be
the approximate equivalent of a tank of gas in the ancient (but
popular) Toyota Camry. Though yes, the core is nuclear, it has
been sitting dormant for nearly six hundred years. Anyways, as
Walker scrambles into a nearby pickup truck, Hunter takes cover
behind a car door as he readies his rifle for its last bullet,
takes aim, and fires. That shot produces an underpowered-looking
explosion for a half-empty 30,000-gallon tanker truck, four
well-aligned shotgun shells, and a nearly dead miniature nuclear
reactor, but it was enough to destroy the thick-but-crumbling
bridge-and to almost kill Hunter…

*ATTACK

Now if you remember, the Sol System War was ongoing,
meaning the massacre at Port Aldrin was just another skirmish…

The unknown forces that brought hell to the facility had assumed
they'd killed everybody.

But in times of war, you never want to fully assume…

-Alec Johnston ("Pinnacle Beings of Sol's
War")

Port Aldrin, Luna

(Exact Location Unavailable)

December 24, 2806, 4:13 A.M.

After cautiously slinking through the shattered, airless
facility, it became pretty clear as to what happened. Grace
flipped the settings on her pistol to infrared beams. Though not
as powerful as the standard laser beam, it would help stretch the
two-and-a-half power cells she has, not to mention the invisible
beam will help to maintain whatever stealth she has left.

Hugging the walls in a dark corner, Grace starts fiddling around
with the touchpad on her arm. Checking the oxygen levels on her
suit, she determines that she won't have enough air to breathe if
she had to fight for long. After tapping the "radio" sections of
her suit to see if anybody else was still alive (which there
wasn't), Grace accidentally heard two people speaking in one of
those "blend languages", just a mish-mash of common languages on
Earth. These guys were seemingly Earth-Asian, speaking mainly
Japanese, Russian, and New Imperial Chinese. Grace, who outside
of English was only fluent in German, placed a text translator on
her suit helmet screen. Here's what she dug up:

"(Processing, please wait) So everybody's dead, right?"

"They better not be, if (intelligible, probability personal
reference) is dead, then our search for (the) creator of Cruz's
Plague will have [been] a complete waste."

"What (profanity term) that?!!"

Grace gasped when she read "Cruz's Plague", alerting the patrol
to her presence. She flipped the safety on her pistol off, slid
down to one knee, and readied herself to shoot. She read the
words "around the corner, lets go" an instant after she saw the
beam of a flashlight. Holding her pistol a little tighter, she
almost screamed when she saw what was around the
flashlight; eight large gun barrels!

Oh, shoot, a railgun! Grace thought, Um, uh,
a-ha!

Grace squeezes off a shot down the hall, causing the patrol's
attention to be focused on the generator she just restarted.
Collapsing on the floor and turning her head, she spots a symbol
nobody within 10 light-years of Earth has seen since the early
2600's: the symbol of the long-lost Shuriken starfleet!

*COMEBACK

Back in 2606, when the war really began to take off, many Asian
countries, especially China, India, Japan, and Korea, began
removing rank-and-file troops from their selectively bred armies.
Combining them with women from an "optimum" gene pool and a
modestly sized fleet of military starships (with experimental
faster-than-light drive engines), and the two fleets named Katana
and Shuriken, after the ships' Japanese origin, and you've got
the farthest any human beings have been from Earth.

But in 2651, the quarter-million person crew, the 500-ship fleet,
was suddenly lost. Though the communications systems at the
Polyphemus colony, the closest one to the fleet, was capable of
recieving a message from the ships within a week, the rest of
humanity gave up the search after several months of unsuccesful
findings.

That's when the rumors started coming in. Whispers of computer
viruses, diseases, and failures started coming into play.
Officialy, a terroristic crew member set off a series of bombs
that destroyed key ships in the fleet-- communications vehicles.

But that's not what happened. When the fleet began monitoring
Earth and colonial transmissions, and catching word of trying to
bring back the Katana and Shuriken fleets to back up their navy,
all 500 ships made a random group jump to who-knows-where, the
Katana fleet going off in a different direction as the Shuriken.

For the next 150 years, the two fleets scavenged the local star
systems for supplies to support their growing numbers. The
troopers that attacked the Lunar colony were scouts who had been
surveying activity for months. Though the current location of the
ships remains unknown to this day, there is little doubt as to
what that scouting team was there for: to investigate their
enemy...

-Alec Johnston ("Pinnacle Beings of Sol's War")

*IX*

Brisbane, Australia

Superhighway 21, .63 Miles from Launch Pads

December 24, 2806, 3:27 A.M.

Hunter opens a car door as Walker dives into a pickup truck.
Hunter readies his rifle's last bullet, takes aim at the core,
and pulls the trigger. The explosion of the fuel truck, along
with the power core and shotgun shells, produces a slow, powerful
explosion, disintegrating anything within thirty feet, destroying
the bridge and any chance the undead creatures on the other side
have to attack the brothers.

But that doesn't really matter, because they might not need to...

* * *

Two clicks, the crack of a rifle, and a deafening explosion.

"Walker! It's safe..." Hunter says,

Walker, still shaking from the blast, stammers out "Yeah,
flinkin' right!!"

"Come on, let's go. Get out of that truck."

"O-kay, just a sec-- Hunter, your arm!"

With a puzzled look on his face, Hunter turns his left arm into
view, revealing a large gash up the bicep extensor. Surprisingly,
there was little blood. From what Hunter could see, in fine
print, there were the words "Petrol Company" scrawled on the
piece. Shrapnel must've dug into Hunter's suit as he turned into
his cover. The metal must have been hot enough to cauterize the
wound-- instantly.

After letting out a deep-throated scream, Hunter shakingly says,
"Okay, okay. Walker, hurry and flip down that black and yellow
switch on my back. We've got thirty seconds to seal my suit
before I'm well, you know. Gimme that patch..."

Walker flicks that switch, and a red twirling light starts
flashing on Hunter's helmet. Suddenly, Hunter collapses on the
ground, limbs tightly locked in a spread-eagle fashion. Then,
joints started freeing up. First the knees, then the ankles and
hips, and eventually all his joints except his left elbow,
shoulder, and neck.

"What did that do?" Walker asks as Hunter stands up,

"Sealant," Hunter says, drawing his revolver, "Standard equipment
on my environment protection suit. It clamps down hard on the two
closest bodily joints around any deep cut or hole in the suit.
Ours were designed primarily for space, meaning they'd normally
trigger if the suit's pressure dropped below a certain point,
reason being why you had to flick that switch on my suit. My arm
is all stiff because of the joint clamps. Come on, we're almost
there, the clamp's cutting off my circulation."

As they walk, Hunter re-holsters his pistol long enough to tape
the hole in his arm shut.

When the boys notice the nose cone of a British rendezvous
shuttle, they notice the facility is awful dark for a mass-launch
being only hours away...

Port Aldrin, Luna

(Exact Location Unavailable)

December 24, 2806, 4:14 A.M.

Lieutenant Cruz is lying on her stomach, watching two (very)
young men inching down the hallway away from her, two men who
shouldn't exist!

"Holy--, hey, does that seem familiar?" Grace whispers to
herself, making sure the microphone was off, "I think I've seen
that before!"

As she starts shuffling for her pistol, one of the troopers does
a lightning-fast about face, snapping around and firing his
railgun wildly down the hall, the clattering metal shards
whizzing inches above the air reserve on Grace's suit.

In an anger infused shout, the other scout shouts in full Chinese
"Stop that shooting! Save [your] ammunition, you only have
[unavailable, probability number] rounds left! Do that again, and
[personal reference] strip your shields with my plasma gun!"

Damn, Grace thought as she read the text, they have
shields! I'll only get one chance at that backpack...

Sliding very slowly along the ground, Grace reaches for her
pistol, flipping a switch to "gamma rays"-- a setting that would
drain the power cell in one shot-- and easily brings herself to a
firing position. Raising the gun's sights on the plasma gun's
power reserve, she pulls the trigger.

That's when Grace's already overtaxed mind blew. In the mere
microseconds it took for the long, deadly beam to fly fifty feet
from Grace's pistol to the Katana/Shuriken Fleet scouts, the
empty cell pops out of the pistol's grip, the bright yellow-green
beam catches the attention of the scouts, who react by opening
fire in Grace's general direction. The first trooper's railgun
jams after a few shots, and the second one, whom Grace intended
to blow his backpack up, twists around beginning to let off a
stream of superhot plasma, but is interrupted when he takes the
full brunt of the beam, shorting out his shields, and ricocheting
to the second trooper, giving Grace enough time to reload, switch
to lasers, and promptly land two beams into each man's chest.

Being careful not to step in molten metal from the plasma stream,
Grace walks over and wields the railgun, testing its weight. It
had heft, but for an industrial-machine-looking weapon, it was
designed for maneuverability.

After several weeks of excruciating travel, Hunter and Walker
finally approach the main airlock to the launch pads of Great
Britain's Northern Madagascar bunker.

"Power's out." Walker disappointedly said, "Great. Nearly three
months of travel, and we can't get in."

"Now you just hush. There's got to be another way in." Hunter
snaps back,

Cautiously turning their searchlights on, the boys draw their
revolvers and march about the area, looking around for another
way into the facility.

"Ho! Over here!" Hunter shouts, his pistol in his locked-up left
arm for a steady shooting platform,

Typical behavior of Hunter Hayes, to use a crutch as a tool
rather than an excuse... Anyways, he discovered a way into the
facility-- the air ducts!

(40 MINUTES LATER...)

"Okay, scanners show the air's clean. Let's take off our suits."
Hunter says, clamoring out the narrow vent,

Walker quickly strips off his clothes, but Hunter, with his
locked arm, barely manages to open his visor.

"Wait, Walker! Help me with this..." Hunter yells as Walker draws
his gun and bolts down the hallway, though he does eventually
come back.

Remembering the sight from several hours earlier, Walker first
thinks and worriedly says, "But what about the shrapnel?"

"That's another problem," Hunter reassuringly says, "First off,
the batteries on my suit are almost dead, so I'll have trouble
moving and breathing if I just leave it on. Plus, (as he
cuts a glove off with his knife) see how white my hand is? I need
to un-clamp my arm."

After some horrid thoughts about what would happen if they missed
the launch (which by now seems to not be happening), Hunter
quickly thinks of what to do.

"Cut off all power on my suit, then dislocate my shoulder."

"What was that last part?!" Walker says in surprise,

"You heard me," Hunter says, "The clamp on my arm needs power.
Cut it off, and it can't press any harder. But there's still the
pressure that's already been applied. Dislocating my shoulder
will give me flexibility enough to slip out of my suit, albeit
very painfully."

"Okay... And what of the metal shard buried in your arm? There's
still that matter when you're out of the suit."

"Once again, that's another problem."

Walker turns a large, stiff dial on his brother's back, and
Hunter does the rest. Hisses, jets of steam and hydraulic fluid,
and dying whines erupt from the suit as it sings its death song.

With the suit dead, a sign of slight relief shows on Hunter's
face, followed by one of anticipation. Sarcastically asking his
brother for a bullet to bite, he sprints down the hallway as hard
as he can to the best of his ability, and then slams his stiff
arm into a protruding corner.

Up the hallway after hearing the crash, Walker says "Are you
alright, did it work?"

"NEEEEEAAAUGH!!!" Hunter shouts out, annoyed,

As he stands back up, Hunter's left arm is bent awkwardly in
front of his chest. Walker swiftly assists him in removing the
suit.

Shortly after all the sharp cries of pain in slipping the
apparently broken arm out of the suit, some distant moans and
shuffling of feet begin growing steadily louder and louder...

Making a sling out of his shirt, Hunter draws his pistol and
motions for Walker to remove the lights from his now-useless
helmet.

"How are we on ammunition?" he whispers,

"How much in your gun?" Walker responds,

With only a dozen bullets between them, the Hayes brothers turn
on their flashlights and slowly slink towards whatever
spaceworthy vehicle they come to.

Turns out the zombies were way closer than the brothers first
thought (Must've been the acoustics of the bunker, nobody has
known the truth since 2949), causing a jumpy Hunter to empty his
six bullets Spaghetti-Western style (a shooting fashion of
holding the trigger and repeatedly flipping the hammer back) when
a trio of undead began rushing the boys. Hunter shot while Walker
ran. That's when they hit the doors.

With power to the heavy lead-lined door almost nonexistent save
an indicator light saying "low power", the brothers Hayes at
first attempted to open the door by force, an impossible task
with Hunter's broken arm. Then Hunter tried using the power cell
from his torch to provide just enough juice to scamper under the
door, assuming they can open it. It would've been much easier if
Walker didn't have to hold off twenty some-odd zombies with a
rapidly dwindling fistful of pistol bullets!

Anyways, by the time Walker resorted to beating the creatures
back with the butt of his revolver, the circuits of the door used
the last volts of energy in the flashlight's battery to partially
open up. The door only opened eight inches, but it was enough for
the boys to crawl under. When the writhing mass of undead zombies
bumped the battery out of socket, the door hit the floor with a
satisfying thud.

The brothers turn around, and through the window in front of
them, a massive orange tank geometrically wrapped in six- no,
eight missile-like rocket engines. Atop the last sixty of this
two-hundred-foot structure, a small innocent freighter ship
balances.

"Let's go." Hunter bravely says,

X

Port Aldrin, Luna

(Exact Location Unavailable)

December 24, 2806, 9:19 A.M.

Grace was quietly walking through the dark hall, noting dead
soldiers of both Lunar and Katana/Shuriken ranking.

Must've been a hell of a fight, Grace
thinks, they even broke out one of the grenade
launchers!

Taking sight of the M-79 grenade launcher, an old but formidable
weapon, Grace plucks it from the hands of a corporal, along with
a bag with another railgun magazine, when a small blue light on
the helmet of the corporal's suit began blinking.

"Self destruct mechanism! Gotta run!" Grace
screams,

When she began running away, suddenly Grace was frozen. A white
light from the inside of her suit flashed on, forming into a sort
of scanning grid on her face. Thinking this is the end, Grace
shuts her eyes. Only she couldn't! The scanning light somehow
froze her! Eventually, the white light grew brighter and
brighter, until she couldn't see. Then a rapid chirping sound
rang in Grace's ears. Then finally, the light cut off, and when
Grace uncontrollably collapsed, she read the message that filled
her suit visor:

ARE YOU LIEUTENANT FIRST CLASS

GRACE AUGUSTINE CRUZ

Y/N?

Reading the message and noticing a bar start to fill when Grace
hovered over the "Y/N" part, she fixed her gaze on "Y" for about
three seconds, and a video feed from several hours ago showing
that corporal hipfiring Grace's newfound grenade launcher and a
machinegun, and the man said:

"Grace, I'm not sure if you even get this, but-KITCHENS! Where's
that mortar I need?!-- I put you in your pod because you are our
only 'necessary' asset here. I knocked you out with that powder
in your food because I knew you wouldn't get in there otherwise.
There's a messenger fighter at the Houston Center dock. Take it
and fly to Kepler, humanity can forget about the moon once
again."

Thinking about how she could possibly get to Houston on
forty-five minutes of oxygen, Grace is suddenly met by a Shuriken
banzai jumper, who is promptly dealt with through the
lieutenant's railgun. Hundreds of long metal shards flared
explosively against the boy's shields, knocking him off his feet.

But, when Grace's weapon jammed, he began coming back up…

"Crap! Too close for the grenade launcher…" She mumbled under her
breath,

In a move even she could not believe she did, Grace dropped her
gun, and as the Shuriken boy raised his weapon, charged at him
with her pistol. She pulled her handgun out oddly, and when she
almost dropped it, she snatched it into her other hand by the
barrel, and drove the butt into the banzai's visor, shattering it
like a baseball to a front window.

In the seconds that followed, Grace reclaimed her pistol. For a
brief moment, she heard a faint whoosh of air carrying an even
fainter scream…

The phrase "(processing) WHAT THE FU-(unavailable)!!" showed up
on Grace's translator as she watched the young boy fall one last
time.

At the sight of the unfamiliar troop transport, Grace forgets
about the railgun, tests the heft of the banzai's submachine gun,
and promptly fades into darkness.

* * *

Brisbane, Australia

British Launch Pad Heathrow-447

December 24, 2806, 11:00 A.M.

Hunter and Walker have almost made it off Planet Earth, but there
is a problem. There are over four thousand undead creatures
busting down the doors trying to eat them! Whenever the first
gate fell, the boys stripped off their packs and hurriedly ran up
the spire of stairs leading to the rocket, zombie horde in
pursuit.

About halfway up the stairwell, Hunter trips, and some of the
undead grab hold of his legs, pulling him down with them. Walker
sees this, and wields a large fire extinguisher. Shouting for his
brother to hold his breath, Walker lets loose a steady stream of
liquid carbon dioxide, allowing Hunter to kick away and shatter
the frozen forms of his captors. Walker chunked the empty can
downstairs, and the brothers lit out for the shuttle.

Winded and with the monsters close behind, the boys approach this
beautiful sight for sore eyes, the spacecraft that could be their
last chance off the dying rock known as Earth.

After closing the small door behind them, Walker excitedly says,
"There's the ship, c'mon! Let's get aboard!" while trying to
cross the tunnel-bridge to the shuttle. Taking tight hold of his
brother's shirt collar, Hunter says:

"Wait, WAIT! See those light shafts? The hallway isn't airtight.
Hold on, (*zap) OW! Yep, a magnetic field. That's what's keeping
us safe. If we try to go through it, assuming the voltage doesn't
fry us, we'd have to hold our breaths for quite a stretch if we
want to climb onto the ship uninfected."

When they heard scratches, clangs and moans at the door, the
brothers Hayes decided to take their chances. Quickly taking in
deep breaths, the boys darted across the hall, enduring the
painful static shocks of the first magnetic field, then the
second shaft after a sixty-some-odd foot sprint.

Gritting his teeth when shrapnel in his arm stuck to the field
generators, Hunter turned and saw the bulkhead at the other end
of the hallway was creaking open!

"Walker! You didn't shut the friggin' DOOR all the way!" Hunter
said, yanking his arm free,

As the writhing mass of zombies flowed across the narrow
corridor, it appeared to almost snag on the first magnetic field
generator, shorting it out.

"Get in!!" Walker cried from the ship's hatch,

The creatures began crawling through the second field when Hunter
finally clamored inside. One wild zombie broke from the masses
and was running their way, but Walker, throwing his knife, scored
a one-in-a-million shot into the creature's head, bringing his
charge to a halt. The boys pull the door shut; seal it tight, and
dash up to she ship's bridge.

"And just how can we expect to fly this?" Hunter
sarcastically says at the sight of the simple controls: Two
awkward-looking joysticks, a throttle lever, and an array of a
dozen buttons.

"That's the one!" He brightly says, finding a button that says,
"launch". Hunter promptly smacks it, causing a computer to ask a
question:

SORRY, YOU HAVE NOT SPECIFIED YOUR LAUNCH TYPE.

PLEASE SELECT:

1. FREIGHTER LAUNCH

2. FIGHTER LAUNCH

3. MASTER LAUNCH

Strapping into his seat, Hunter selects "freighter launch" and
randomly selects a ship from a long list. Second later, a ship
not far from their location leaves the pad.

"Hunter, HURRY!" Walker screams as he hears scratches and
bellowing moans inch their way up the hull,

Hunter must've launched ten more ships by the time one of the
demonic monsters made it to the bridge, clawing away at the thick
glass,

The sight was met with a loud shriek from Walker, and a "screw
this" from Hunter, who slapped "master launch" on the computer's
keypad,

From below the ship, eight massive rockets roar to life in an
ear-splitting crack, shattering windows all around the launch
pad. When the docking clamps released, the shuttle rose out of
the launch tube, incinerating all the floors of the viewing
decks, and with it, the last of the undead in the facility, save
the one clinging for its half-life on the nose of the starship.

The hazy sky faded from a sickening blue-green to a jet
black.Using an automated flight path, Walker and Hunter's cruiser
joined the formation of dozens of other cargo ships, and hundreds
of fighters already clustered above Earth.

"Now that we're up here, just what will we do about your arm?"
Walker asks, pointing out the break and the shrapnel wound,

"I dunno. The ship must have a medical bay or something, let's
take a look."

"WAIT! Hang on,"

Walker overrides the flight controls of the ship so that it won't
influence the rest of the fleet, and throws the reverse boosters,
causing the zombie-who began eating the airtight seal, to shoot
off into oblivion.

With their ship completely motionless, the Hayes brothers explore
their salvational craft, searching for a medical ward for
Hunter's arm. They eventually do, but as Hunter settles into the
infirmary stasis booth, Walker calls from the bridge:

"Hunter! Take a look at the fleet! Now, hurry!"

Snapping out of the oncoming anesthesia, Hunter swaggers up to
the bridge, where out of about 990 ships and fighters, each
individual one was disappearing with missiles that were being
fired from a Lunar reconnaissance fleet!

"Walker, you know how to operate that gun, right?" Hunter asks,
planning,

"I… think so, why can't you?" Walker responds,

"Uh, my ARM?"

Walker scrambles up a ladder to what looks like a large
machinegun, sits in a seat, strapping in and swiveling around a
turret. Nervously, he pulls the two triggers, sending a crimson
red beam off into space. When he figured out how the holographic
targeting system works, Walker turned his gun as far as it could,
just barely missing the capability of opening fire at one of the
ships.

"Hunter, Can you turn the ship? I can't aim!" he suavely asks
over the intercom,

"Gimme a second, I'm trying to-Missile lock! Hold on a moment,
I'm about to make the ship do an FTL jump!" Hunter hollers back,

"Can't I just shoot it down?"

"Do that! Electronic warfare's disabled the navigation systems!"

Walker does so, reducing the rocket to smoldering ash. However,
as if to say "two can play at that game", several more missiles
pop into view…

"Much better," she says to herself, "Now I won't feel so heavy,
and I can breathe!"

Though she had plenty of oxygen, Grace took some reserve tanks
from the pod, started up her battlesuit motors, and began
trudging across the lunar landscape.

(1 HOUR LATER…)

Seeing that her suit's batteries were about to die, Grace began
striding across the ground in big, sixty-foot bounds. On the dark
side of the moon, where the Houston facility is located, Grace
can see Lunar gunships taking off and landing all about Houston's
docks.

Feeling a strange shift in her inner ear, Grace picks up a
gravity field of a Katana/Shuriken gunship headed towards the
base. Diving behind a boulder, Grace peppers the passing ship
with grenades from her semiautomatic launcher, bringing the ship
down almost a quarter mile away from Grace.

To give her suit a temporary boost, Grace cuts off her shields
and diverts the extra juice to her motors. That doesn't last
long. She sprints hard in ninety-foot bounds for about a
minute, until the batteries in her suit finally die with a
contested whine. The suit brought out an emergency solar panel to
charge the batteries, but in the lack of sunlight, Grace simply
ripped the extra bulk off.

Now is where Grace started struggling. Old rover and boot tracks
from hundred-year-old construction projects came into view, being
stirred up by a landing shuttlecraft as Grace's dying heads-up
display blackened…

"Grace! Glad you're alive, you look famished, have a carrot!" An
anxious tech said as they walked into the room,

"Why does everybody seem worried? I know about the Asian's lost
fleets and all, but why?" Grace asked, stumbling to a
desk,

"We need to evacuate. Our mission to kill Earth has gone swell,
except for the hundreds and hundreds of starships that took off
two hours ago! Take this, and take out as many ships as you can
before the general finds out!"

Taking the targeting computer from the tech's hands, Grace
sarcastically says: If I know General Hapes well, he already
knows. Now how do you work this thing?!"

Lunar soldiers are always for simplicity. The device in Grace's
hands is simply a ten-inch screen, a knob, button, and switch to
choose a ship to fire from. The screen and audio outputs on the
device weren't working, so it was patched into the amphitheatre
screen, not for theatrics, but it's the only screen available.
Grace starts at a capital ship in front of the Brits, and
destroys twenty ships with a nuclear bomb.

"Easy on the nukes," an officer said, "We're saving those for the
Coda Banda bombing runs next week."

With an affirmative glance and a flick of the switch, Grace swaps
missile types and begins carefully bringing down ship after ship.

"Kind of odd how none of them are shooting back, eh?" she says,
firing another rocket,